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Spirited Away

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"Once you meet someone, you never forget them, even if you can't remember."

—Zeniba

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Originally, Princess Mononoke was meant to be Hayao Miyazaki's swan song, but much to the delight of the anime world, he returned with a film that managed to top Princess Mononoke's staggering box-office numbers.

Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, "Sen and Chihiro's Spiriting-Away"), said to be inspired by a 9-year-old girl Miyazaki met, is a surreal adventure film that defies simple explanation, but can be simplistically described as Japan's version of Alice in Wonderland.

Chihiro, a sullen young girl unwillingly moving to a new town, is stranded in the spirit world after her parents stop by what appears to be an abandoned amusement park and eat food that turns them into pigs. At first, her only aid is Haku, a mysterious boy who finds her shelter and a job in a bathhouse that caters to these spirits; eventually, Chihiro makes more friends as she searches for a way to make her parents human again and escape the spirit world before she forgets her real identity. Oh, and that's just the first half-hour—which doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the odd denizens of the spirit world, ranging from the villainous bathhouse manager Yubaba to arachnid worker Kamajii to the enigmatic, near-voiceless spirit No Face.

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The fact that it won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film (the only traditionally-animated film and the only anime film to do so to date) should be noted as the Oscars tend to favor CG American Animated productions.

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This film provides examples of:

Despite being a young girl. Losing your parents and having to rescue them? Your best friend almost bleeding to death and having to save his life? Chihiro deals with some pretty grown-up situations while maturing as a person.

The baby's disappearance. You think everything is fine, and then you realize your child is missing. Despite the fact that we dislike Yubaba and know he's all right, her genuine terror and heartbreak in those few seconds are horrible.

Yubaba is a crow/raven who are known to be cunning, ominous and foretell death and destruction, such as Yubaba taking the names of her workers and "killing" their past selves so they can't remember who they are and thus are enslaved to her forever (unless they remember their name).

The six-armed Kamaji, with his fuzzy mustache and black Lennon Specs, is a spider spirit.

Award-Bait Song: "Itsumo Nando Demo" (Always With Me) by Youmi Kimura. It was originally written for Rin the Chimney Sweeper, but that project fell through. Miyazaki listened to the song constantly while working on Spirited Away. It's also missing some key elements of an Award Bait Song, most notably the lack of "sparkly" synth.

Bad Black Barf: No-Face starts coughing and drooling black barf (among other things) after being given medicine from Chihiro.

Zeniba turns Boh and Yubaba's servant into a mouse and a tiny bird, respectively. When Chihiro later asks her to change them back, she says that the spell has worn off, and they can change back any time they want. (They don't choose to until later.)

Word of God states that this is the reason No-Face followed Sen around after she let him into the bath-house.

It's also implied that this is why Kamaji was willing to help Chihiro out so much—she saved a Soot Spirit that struggled under the weight of his coal and finished the job for him, proving that she was both kindhearted and willing to work if provoked.

Chihiro restores her parents to human form and returns to the real world, but it's implied that memories of the spirit world promptly leave her mind afterward, and she won't be able to see Haku again.

Once implied by Miyazaki that Chihiro and Haku wouldn't meet again until her death.

The American ending also hints that Chihiro will remember some of her adventure; when her father remarks starting life in a new home and school can be scary, Chihiro replies, "I think I can handle it," suggesting that she's maintaining her memories (or at least the confidence she gained from her trip to the spirit world).

Blood from the Mouth: Haku due to the effects of Zeniba's curse. Makes sense since Kamaji says he is bleeding from the inside.

Body Horror: Several instances, most notably when Chihiro's parents turn into pigs or when she herself nearly vanishes into nothingness.

Book-Ends: The film begins and ends with Chihiro clutching her mother's arm while they follow her father through a tunnel. Her mother even tells Chihiro to stop clutching at her—that she'll make her fall.

Comfort Food: Onigiri is Japanese soul food; this is one of the reasons why Chihiro cries while eating one of these.

Coming-of-Age Story: At the start of the film, Chihiro comes off as a lost, yet hardheaded little girl. Her experiences in the spirit world help her break out of her shell and shape her into a polite, headstrong, and confident young woman.

Converse with the Unconscious: Chihiro tells the unconscious Haku that she was leaving for some time (to return the golden seal to Zeniba) and that he had to get better. Later when Haku wakes up, he reveals to Kamaji that he heard Chihiro's voice and followed it until he woke up.

Despite being a weasel spirit, Lin looks fully human; some fans have theorized she may have once, indeed, been human and in the same situation as Chihiro.

Haku is a male example in his usual form, a young, Bishōnen boy about Chihiro's age; in his true form, he's a dragon.

Dark Is Not Evil: Quite a few spirits are friendly to Chihiro initially, most notably Haku, but also Lin and Kamaji, and a few others warm up to her and start to like her eventually (the crisis with No Face seems to be the part where a lot of them start to do so) until the end, where almost all of them are trying to support her. And of course, there's No Face itself, a rather terrifying Humanoid Abomination which craves Chihiro's friendship.

Disproportionate Retribution: Chihiro's parents eat food that has been left out in the open in unattended booths and are fully willing to pay for it if an owner appears. So naturally they deserve to be turned into pigs, right? (Of course, Humans might consider it Disproportionate Retribution, but seeing as this is a common theme in stories among fairies and spirits, such beings apparently do not.)

Don't Look Back: Chihiro is instructed not to look back when leaving the Spirit World. She nearly turns when she's almost left, but with the sparkling of Zeniba's magic hairband, resists the temptation.

Emotion Eater: Word of God has stated that the reason No-Face went crazy is that he feeds on the emotions of those around him, and that their Greed corrupted him. Good thing it wasn't permanent.

End of an Age: A subtle one about cultural traditions eroding: Chihiro doesn't recognize roadside shrines or understand the traditional etiquette, and the formerly two-wayAfterlife Express now goes only one direction. The image album has the workers lament that fewer and fewer gods show up every year, as they're slowly dying out, and "there are no gods in electric things."

Enigmatic Minion: Haku is bound to Yubaba's service, but helps Chihiro whenever no one else is around to see.

Establishing Character Moment: After Haku gives Chihiro the berry to stop her from disappearing and to prove that it worked, they gently touch hands. It's a fast blink-and-you-miss moment but Haku's tender expression quickly reveals to the audience that he isn't as cold as he appears to be.

With all the explicit similarities to Alice in Wonderland, it is extremely likely that Yubaba is consciously inspired by the character of the Duchess. Both are old ladies, grotesquely deformed with gigantic heads, both mean and bad tempered and care immensely (in all the wrong ways) for a huge, spoiled baby who is actually happier to be transformed into a simpler creature. The Duchess, when first met, is grumpy and grouchy, but the second time, in the Queen of Hearts' party, she is almost uncomfortably friendly to Alice. Yubaba and Zeniba may not be the same person, but they do look the same and are exact opposites in terms of personality.

She's also suspiciously similar to Juno from Beetlejuice: a grumpy old white woman from the spirit world who smokes a lot of cigarettes. Their voices even sound alike.

Food Chains: Chihiro's parents should know better than to eat food that doesn't belong to them in a fairy tale. Chihiro, however, must eat a morsel of the Spirit World's food in order to avoid fading away, binding her to the realm just enough to keep her solid.

Food Porn: Let's just say it's a bad idea to watch this movie on an empty stomach in some parts. In others, it's a very bad idea to be eating while watching it...

The cleansed river spirit moves in a sinuous, looping way that is reminiscent of flowing water after he is outside of the bath house, which Haku's dragon form also emulates in flight; only natural, since Haku himself turns out to be a river spirit.

Chihiro's father can be heard snorting as he eats (in the English dub at least) which works as subtle foreshadowing to him and Chihiro's mother getting turned into pigs.

Funny Background Event: Lin is a little annoyed that Yubaba doesn't compliment her after they help the stink spirit.

Geas: Yubaba swore an oath which makes her bound to employ people who ask her for a job. She doesn't like it, and, as detailed in Loophole Abuse below, tries to weasel her way out of hiring humans, but eventually concedes when Chihiro insists.

Generic Cuteness: Chihiro was designed specifically to avoid this trope. Hayao Miyazaki has complained about how a plain or unattractive male character can still be the star but female characters all have to be cute to be the protagonist.

Gentle Giant: The Great Radish Spirit is gigantic, but also seems gentle and supportive (through body language—he's not a talker).

Ghost Town: At first. By day, the bath house and surrounding village looks like an abandoned amusement park. The spirits appear at night.

Kind of justified: they are eating food made for gods in a territory where gods gather night by night...

Gold Fever: All of the employees at the bathhouse go crazy trying to pick up the gold No-Face drops, although it turns out to not be enough to cover the damage he causes in the end. Not to mention that it turns out to be made of dirt.

Gray and Gray Morality: One of the main themes of this movie is the blurred line between good and evil. People who seem good has flaws but even Yubaba, the closest thing the film has to a villain, is just trying to seem fair and dearly loves her son, Boh.

Greed: The greed for gold from the bathhouse employees caused No Face to become consumed to eat as much as he wants.

This movie has an unusually subtle one for Miyazaki: a "stink spirit" comes to visit the bathhouse, and the bathhouse workers try to turn him away because he is so rank. The "stink spirit" is actually the spirit of a polluted river, and after Chihiro gives him a bath and, with others' help, de-pollutes him, Chihiro is rewarded with the medicine that later helps both Haku and No-Face.

Also, the spirit of the Kohaku River (Haku) was enslaved and forgot his identity after that river was filled in by humans.

Green Eyes: Haku has very beautiful, striking green eyes, especially when compared to the rest of the cast. At the same time they are cold and emotionless, until he gets his name back.

The silent spirit No Face is shunned by everyone else except for Chihiro who treats him with kindness. He later begins swallowing up spirits, which bloats him into a disgustingly obese, multi-limbed creature. Only medicine from Chihiro appeases him.

The Radish Spirit is a big, floppy, vaguely obscene-looking example of this trope — as well as The Speechless and Gentle Giant. On the other hand, he doesn't suffer the social ostracism usually associated with The Grotesque.

Growing Up Sucks: Subverted. Chihiro acts sulky at first, then becomes mature and resourceful as the film goes on. Or as the film goes on she is revealed to be more mature and resourceful than she appears.

Heroic Bystander: Believe it or not, the Soot Spirits get to be this! When Yubaba's cursing slug tries to escape, the little balls of soot team up to block their tunnels, keeping the creature from getting away and allowing Chihiro to kill it.

High-Pressure Blood: A small amount spouts out of the River Spirit after Sen pulls the last of the junk out of him.

Humans Are Smelly: Most everyone in the bathhouse remarks on the "human stink" on Chihiro, some suggesting it's bad for business.

Hypocrite: Maybe unintentional, but when Chihiro first goes to Yubaba asking for a job, she initially refuses, saying that Chihiro is, "A spoiled, lazy crybaby and you have no manners!" and shortly after this is interrupted by her baby, who fits her description of Chihiro pretty much perfectly. Furthermore, she criticizes her employees for being greedy and attracting the wrong type of customer, when greed is pretty much her sole defining characteristic.

I Gave My Word: This actually happens twice in the span of ten minutes at the climax of the story. First, Boh tries to convince Yubaba to release Chihiro and her parents without testing Chihiro, and she almost considers it; however, Chihiro insists that she be tested, saying that a deal is a deal (even though she is not the one who actually made the deal). Second, Chihiro ends up passing the test, despite the fact that Yubaba made it extra tricky (she has to identify her parents in a large group of pigs and correctly guesses that it's none of them) and Yubaba keeps her end of the bargain by voiding her contract.

I Know Your True Name: Yubaba binds people to her by stealing their names, and they can only get free of her if they remember their real name. The theft of her sister's gold seal is an attempt to steal her name as well.

I'm a Humanitarian: Apparently humans taste good to the spirits, though they're not inclined to eat them on a whim.

Indirect Kiss: Chihiro bites the medicine ball in half before feeding it to Haku. She may have been trying to show Haku that it was safe to eat, or simply didn't have the strength to break a very hard piece of medicine with her hands as opposed to her jaw.

It's All About Me: After Chihiro has pried a job out of Yubaba, over relentless and vicious attempts to intimidate her out of asking, Yubaba laments her promise to employ anyone who asked for a job, as it makes her have to be so nice all the time and she really hates that.

Letterbox: Disney included widescreen picture on the 2003 VHS, even though they rarely released widescreen videotapes of their own movies.

Loophole Abuse: As noted above, Yubaba is magically bound to hire anyone who repeatedly asks her for a job. However, she's free to distract, insult, or even physically assault the potential employee; that person has to remain completely focused on requesting employment to counteract this.

Loss of Identity: Yubaba steals the names of anyone who works for her, thus taking their memories of their past and their real name. Even Chihiro, who was in the spirit world for a day, had nearly forgotten her name until reminded. In fact, Haku is trying to free himself from Yubaba's contract by remembering who he is as well. But for some reason, he was only able to recall Chihiro.

Loud Gulp: When Chihiro has to pick out which of the pigs are her parents.

Lull Destruction: Quite a bit in the English dub, with background chatter added to otherwise quiet scenes and a few ad-libbed lines thrown in.

Magical Land: The bath-house borders two worlds—the human world (which can be reached by going across the dry riverbed by day), and the world of the kami (which can be reached by taking a ferry across the still-flowing river by night). The latter is a Magical Land.

Chihiro's name can be translated as "a thousand fathoms" or "ask a thousand questions". Chihiro's name is later "stolen" by Yubaba and she is given the more generic name Sen, which means only "a thousand." Essentially, Chihiro has been reduced from a person to a number in Yubaba's service, and according to Haku, she can only break free of it if she remembers her true name. Turns out Chihiro was the name of the real little girl upon whom Miyazaki based the character, like "Alice".

Also, possibly by coincidence, the kanji characters left after Yubaba removes most of Chihiro's name resemble the English word "it". A further dehumanization.

The movie itself: Sen to Chihiro, or "Sen and Chihiro," — two different people.

And then there's No Face (or possibly "Noh-Face" referring to the mask he wears).

Haku, while having its own meaning, also sounds very close to the Japanese word for "100", Hyaku. This goes rather well with Chihiro's new name, Sen, meaning "1000".

Mind Screw: Big time. This was lampshaded by Cartoon Network's ads for it, which, after explaining how Chihiro got stuck in an alternate universe, her parents turned into pigs, and she sold her name to a "crazy witch lady," the narrator goes on to say, "And that's just the first twenty minutes!"

Misunderstood Loner with a Heart of Gold: Actually, two of them. Despite initial impressions, neither Yubaba nor Zeniba are all that evil. Neither is No Face, who is seen only by himself, and tells Chihiro/Sen that he is lonely and doesn't have any friends or family.

Yubaba's son Boh, who seems to be the only thing she cares about more than making money. When he goes missing, she goes full Mama Bear on Haku, complete with breath of fire.

Chihiro is also this herself, to a number of characters. She brings out the best in grouchy Lin, Haku, and Kamaji, and is the only one who cares for No-Face properly.

Muck Monster: The bathhouse is visited by an incredibly stinky spirit that resembles an enormous pile of sludge. It turns out that the visitor is actually the spirit of a river that has been badly polluted by garbage.

Multi-Armed Multitasking: Kamaji, the spider spirit, runs the bath house's boiler room without any help from the other employees. He uses his six arms to simultaneously stoke the boiler, collect ingredients from the many drawers in the wall behind him, grind them to powder, and mix them into herbal blends to add to the bathwater. The only thing he can't do himself is feed coal into the boiler; for that, he enchants soot into little spirit-balls who toss the coal in for him.

Name Amnesia: Yubaba controls the workers at the baths by taking away their names and giving them new ones. Haku warns Chihiro that if she forgets her real name like he did, she won't be able to escape and will have to serve Yubaba forever. Chihiro manages to free him by reminding him that his true name is the Kohaku River.

Name-Face Name: No-Face, a featureless black spirit that literally has no face, only a mask to represent one.

If Chihiro's parents hadn't explored that abandoned amusement park, and gotten tempted by the strange food, they might not have stranded themselves and their daughter in the spirit world.

Chihiro lets No Face into the bathhouse, which leads to him wreaking havoc after she rejects his gold. Chihiro then lures him out while going to Zeniba to see Haku.

Played with. Chihiro already knows the power of names and how they can break spells. She reveals Haku's true name to him while they're at cruising altitude, and the dragon reverts to human form. Luckily, he can fly in that form, too.

No One Gets Left Behind: Played With. When Haku tells Chihiro to leave before it gets dark, she goes back for her parents. Then she sees they're turned into pigs, but is unwilling to believe it. She runs through the road for a while calling for her parents, before trying to cross the river alone. Haku then tells her she has to save her parents by getting a job with Kamaji, and the Yubaba.

A supernatural reason for this one. It's implied that Yubaba's coddling of her son Boh is why he's such a big baby.

Inverted with Chihiro, who is forced to grow up in several ways. She loses her parents (since they're pigs), and is forced into a job via contract all within the course of a few hours. Damn.

Ocular Gushers: Chihiro cries quite a lot at first until she begins to grow up and take responsibility for herself. Then again, she is only 10 or 11, and is going through a pretty traumatic experience.

Odd Job Gods: There are some pretty weird spirits in this world, such as the Radish Spirit, and the Stench Spirit. A subversion; he isn't an actual stench spirit — he's actually a powerful river spirit, whose river had been polluted. Still, this does suggest that Stench Spirits do exist somewhere.

Yubaba gets another one when she's told that Boh is with her sister Zeniba.

Older Than Feudalism: A lot of the elements of the story date back to mythologies set in stone millennia ago, to name just a few: the rules that can't be broken, eating food from a different realm, the onset of dusk as the transition point from human to spirit world, the Afterlife Express of course (with its ancient equivalent the ferry/boat), and the necessity of not turning back after being given an exit from said spirit world despite the temptation to do so. All of these have their roots in some of the earliest Celtic, Greek and Japanese mythologies. It's difficult to tell how much that has drifted down and seeped into different cultural mythos throughout the ages and was subsequently taken from modern fairytales and Youkai myth, or what was ripped straight from the history pages, but either way there is a definite Shown Their Work in the amount of involved ancient mythology that played the setting for this film.

Our Dragons Are Different: Haku AKA Kohaku is in fact a river spirit. This makes sense since in Eastern mythology, dragons are more strongly associated with water than fire. As a dragon styled on Japanese myth, he has a wolf's head, feelers like a koi or catfish, antlers like a deer or elk, a serpentine body, and bird-like legs.

Parents Know Their Children: Inverted. To rescue her parents, Chihiro must pick them out of a line-up of several dozen other pigs. She correctly determines that none of the pigs are her parents.

Polar Opposite Twins: Zeniba and Yubaba might look exactly alike, but couldn't be more different in personality. Zeniba is nice and grandmotherly but is clearly capable of anger and retribution, while Yubaba is a nasty old woman who is still a Reasonable Authority Figure.

The Power of Friendship: When Chihiro is leaving Zeniba's house she is given a ribbon to protect her that "was woven from threads made by your friends".

The Power of Love: Zeniba reveals that Haku could only have been saved from her spell by Chihiro's love for him. Strangely, this line does not exist in the Japanese version.

Product Placement: Based on the frontal shot of Chihiro's father's car during the opening credits, it would be obvious that it was an Audi even if the four-rings symbol wasn't holding pride of place in the middle of the grille. Lampshaded later when Chihiro asks her father if they are lost and he replies "Don't worry, honey; Daddy's got four-wheel drive!" Whether the car's a 100 or a 200, it's definitely the quattro version.

Properly Paranoid: Chihiro yells at her parents to keep away from the abandoned amusement park and not eat the food that's out there because she's getting the creeps. They ignore her since she's been bratty during the drive. Surprise, surprise, the bathhouse is a portal to the spirit world and the enchanted food turns them into pigs! Say what you will about Chihiro, but she has good instincts.

Punch-Clock Villain: Yubaba is a very unpleasant old lady, but only curses Chihiro because she's basically constrained to carry out her role by her job.

Kamaji. Haku tells Chihiro to seek a job from him for this reason. Although Kamaji doesn't need Chihiro's help himself, he sees her pluck and spirit. So instead he bribes Rin into taking Chihiro to get a job directly from Yubaba. Later on, he helps her when Haku falls into the boiler room and is bleeding heavily.

Despite being quite unsympathetic as an antagonist, wanting to turn Chihiro's family into pigs and all, Yubaba turns out to be reasonable as well. She makes Chihiro work as hard as the rest of the other workers, who have years of labor behind them, but sees that she has potential. Yubaba senses that the Stink Spirit is something more, and orders Chihiro to clean him as a Secret Test of Character; when Chihiro says he needs help because something is stuck in his side, Yubaba orders all the bathhouse employees to help Chihiro pull out the "thorn" (actually a lot of garbage) from the spirit, cleaning it, unveiling its true form as a river dragon, and leaving them with piles of gold. She then hugs Chihiro and says So Proud of You for figuring out what was wrong. At the end, she agrees with Haku to give Chihiro one last test to earn her parents and freedom back, and honors her word when Chihiro passes with flying colors.

Red Herring: The river spirit that Chihiro cleans gives her an herb cake, that she thinks she can use to change her parents back. She uses half the cake to save Haku from Zeniba's curse, and the rest to save No-Face from the bad influence of the bathhouse and the people he ate.

The "lesson" that No Face learns from the bathhouse residents. Chihiro teaches him a lesson when she refuses his gold.

Chihiro's parents at the buffet. "Daddy's got credit cards and cash!" However, this may not entirely count given that they mention that they can pay the bill when the workers get back.

It's her father's blind faith in cash that gets everyone in trouble. After all, he's assuming the price is paper money or credit.

Shapeshifting: Haku, a dragon, can transform into a human, and Yubaba into a birdlike creature. Zeniba turns Boh into a mouse. Also, in the Japanese version, it is explicitly stated that every worker in the bathhouse is a transformed animal spirit.

Shoo the Dog: When Chihiro first meets Haku, he tells her she shouldn't be at at the bathhouse and to run across the river before sundown. The sun then goes down fast. He tells her to Get Out while he distracts the spirits. Chihiro tries, but she can't rescue her parents and doesn't make it in time before the formerly-dry river becomes full.

The film's ending is very slightly similar to the ending of Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon (1965), which had been rewritten on Miyazaki's suggestions.

Being told not to look back is a callback either to the story of Izanami and Izanagi, Orpheus and Eurydice, or Lot... except in Chihiro's case, she's successful.

Speaking of Greek mythology, Chihiro's parents being turned into pigs after eating food belonging to the supernatural hearkens back to The Odyssey, with Yubaba the spirit/witch/youkai in place of Circe the goddess/sorceress/nymph. The same danger, just stretched out over a longer period of time, is posed to her parents but, much like Odysseus, Chihiro saves them in the end. Furthermore, her parents' lack of awareness that they've been in the spirit world for as long as they were, thinking it was only an hour or two at most, is reminiscent of the Land of the Lotus-eaters.

Stating the Simple Solution: When her family first enters the spirit world, they cross over a dried-up river. Haku shouts at Chihiro to get across the river before sunset, or she'll be stuck. Chihiro does try, but it gets dark all too quickly and the dry-river fills up with water, too deep for her to wade across. There's also the problem of her parents being turned into pigs, since she can't and won't leave them behind.

The Stoic: Haku, when he's not with Chihiro. He doesn't even bat an eyelid when Yubaba breathes fire at him.

Take a Third Option: At the end, Chihiro is shown a dozen pigs, and has to choose which two among them are her parents in order to free them and herself. Her choice? Her parents aren't in there.

Take Away Their Name: The witch Yubaba magically enslaves her employees stealing their names, thus taking their memories of their past and their real name. She gives them new names, to avoid nameless confusion. They can only get free of her if they remember their real name.

Yubaba: So, your name's Chihiro? What a pretty name! And it belongs to me now.

You can't tell in English, but Chihiro's parents should really have known better than to eat in a "park" where the signs advertise such foods as "dog" and "eyeball". Not to mention that they really should have waited to pay before engorging themselves, and they kept insisting that there was nothing weird or supernatural about the 'park'. It's pretty easy even for someone who doesn't read or speak Japanese to tell that there's something ungodly stupid about what they're doing.

It can be theorized that the enchantments on the food are probably what causes them to engorge themselves, though they still fell for the Schmuck Banquet big time.

Most of the bathhouse employees, who cheerfully serve No Face without even questioning where he's from, even though he just pops up in the middle of the night and mysteriously speaks with the voice of another employee. Yubaba later curses their stupidity over letting No Face in, suggesting that they ought to have recognized the threat he potentially posed.

Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: A hilarious scene in which Lin smuggles Sen aboard the bath house's upper elevator. She's stuck on it with the elephantine, Ugly Cute Radish Spirit. Since she's really not supposed to be in the bath-house at all and most of the other spirits have already expressed their revulsion for humanity, she's trying hard to brace for the worst while remaining unnoticed. (Not easy when the other passenger is so big that you're being squeezed against the side of the elevator.) Veeery awkward. Luckily, he's either kindly enough, mischievous enough, or apathetic enough to call nobody's attention to her.

Unfolding Plan Montage: When instructing Chihiro how to get to Kamaji, Haku touches her forehead and we see a preview of the path ahead.

Visual Pun: No-Face could be described as having a Noh◊ face, though only in English.

Voice Changeling: No-Face can perfectly imitate the voices of people he's just eaten.

Wainscot Society: The spirit community doesn't appear to be in very regular contact with the human world — but nonetheless, Muggles can fall into it by just wandering into the wrong abandoned amusement park.

Year Outside, Hour Inside: While the audience is never given an exact time scale for how long Chihiro was in the spirit world, the trope is heavily implied: when she returns to the living world, the car is dusty and the foliage around it has grown some. The car does start without a problem, however, so it can't have been more than a few days.

You Are a Credit to Your Race: Yubaba doesn't like humans at all, and at their first meeting she shows tremendous contempt for Chihiro. However, by the time Chihiro has proven herself several times over and insists on facing Yubaba's challenge fair and square, the old ogress admits her uppity servant has courage and determination.

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